Switching to electric vehicles

I like the bolt, better than tesla 3, and it actually got built, and built without taxpayer input. What I want to see, is real world range after charging 10 hours outside at -25 deg C, then operating at -25 deg C , driving through 6" of snow, heater and defrost at full blast the whole time. I’m still a sceptic for real world applications in all climates. What’s the range under these conditions without putting the battery below 20%? That will be a test I can have faith in.

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It’s nice, but I feel the wrong application for the technology. To recapitulate the heydays of the age of oil and coal won’t lead to good ends on a realistic energy budget and system. We will have to see how it rolls out. Let’s hope this green electric dream isn’t based on FF generators, the efficiency of that means coal would be better burnt in modern day Stanley steamers.

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Will that is time in service. You have to remember you are looking at it from the perspective of someone who uses a gas vehicle with over 100 years of engineering behind it. The early gas cars a decade or 2 in weren’t as nice as the electric we have now.
If it gets too cold I have to heat my diesel or she won’t start about -10 F with no wind and running it within the last 12 hours or the glow plugs just are not enough and you at plugging her in. My point is yes we might have to heat batteries or keep the car in a moderately warm space for example below ground where the ground temp keeps it above freezing around here. But there are answers. If your car has to function in extreme cold it will probably need range extender batteries and extra insulation to and maybe heaters to keep them warm. We do simular things to winterize diesel vehicles and the fuel for them now. If you question that just fill up down south and drive back up north this time of year. Maybe an 18 wheelers driver learns that one the hard way.

Gary I am not saying we can keep our wasteful ways just that there are other means of transportation beside ff which will allow us to not have to go back to horses. Which is good because we would need to raise a boat load of horses for our current population. Lol

The one thing I like about electric powered devices is that it allows you to run it on anything. We can make electricity from wind solar hydro wood other bio mass waves. And then all the yucky stuff as well. The point being simply that in a future of alternative energy you can make the power with some locally available resource but big auto can still market the cars everywhere regardless of it you are in a solar or wind or hydro power region.

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Actually to replace all the gas vehicles in the US, it is going to be around a 50% increase in grid use. You gain quite a bit of efficiency with the electrics. I don’t know about diesel. Right now it isn’t about making sure you get every oddball case. Even if Tesla gets it’s semi into production, you aren’t going to see it on ice road truckers anytime soon.

The Bolts/Volts and Tesla’s along with I would guess anything with lion batteries have temperature control for the battery packs as well as AC and heating for the cabin. It cuts down on range but it is there already. For the Bolt you get a pedal to the floor range at top speed of 93 mph is 160 miles.

Oh man you had to go and tell everyone that it only goes 93 mph now no one will buy it because it isn’t the fastest car in the crowd who wants a slow car??? LMAO I don’t know if anyone watches the grand tour on amazon or not but the last episode where they raced the electric car compared to the gas was soo funny and so stupid at the same time. Captain Slow kicked Jeremy butt all the way up to about 100 but since the kept the race going to a speed you can’t drive on any road in the usa (atleast without risking running into a blue light special) they claimed that the electric car was slower. When for Any practical speed it was crazy faster with all that torque of the electric motor.
I was thinking it saids something that they can sell a car in Europe with a shorter range though. Here I drove about 45 miles to work everyday 90 miles round trip and I always figured I needed twice that range to be able to go somewhere after work and still get home. We really do live spread out lives in the usa but in our economy here there isn’t a good way around it that I can see. Unless you live in a city but I tried that it just isn’t me.
Sean I did know that there are battery heaters in the Tesla I didn’t mention them being there only because I wounder how much power or range it will suck back this time of year while you are at work for 10 hours. I know no company I worked for would provide an outside outlet for you to plug in. I have actually gone out at night and not been sure my duramax would actually start because it was soo cold. And before someone asks yes it had good batteries just gets that cold here at times.

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I agree. Physics seems to say that isn’t going to happen with any degree of efficiency. Keeping windows free of frost in a vehicle is a necessity, apart from keeping the passengers alive and comfortable. FF burning results in so much waste energy, that function is a free gift. For an electric, whole different story. Then the dilemma of keeping the batteries heated at minus 25 or colder. If battery power is expected to heat the batteries, the system efficiency is gone, and standby capacity would probably be in the range of a day or two before full depletion. Obviously an active heating system plugged into the grid would be much more efficient, but still very costly, and needing standalone backup on board. As for cabin heating, I believe a propane or natural gas auxiliary system would be far more efficient. Charcoal might be pressed into service.

Granted, these challenges become less critical the further south you go, but windows have to be frost free, and pushing tires through snow uses way more power.

Given that the north American electrical grid is powered generally by coal and natural gas, crunching the numbers leaving aside cabin and battery heating it soon becomes clear it’s more efficient to just burn the natural gas in a conventional vehicle. The real world efficiency gains are to be had by reducing curb weight, wind resistance, and rolling resistance. Easily enough gains are available there that the president could, with a stroke of a pen, mandate efficient vehicles to the degree that the US would cease to import foreign oil.

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A look at this link might help:

Tesla uses the waste heat from the cars electronics, motor and battery charge discharge to run cabin heat. Ac would be a draw of course. Ev are a philosophical change. We have been buying FF all our life and letting the waste energy generated at the well head, refinery, and distribution end go unnoticed except as price. We only notice EVs limits and costs because we are having to build the infrastructure from scratch in the 21st century where costs are more obvious, labour is expensive and regulation prevents the kind of reckless development that brought the car FF industry about. Having said all that I’m not ready to jump on board the Ev wagon yet. I would be that farmer in his field with his team seeing all the steam tractors appear at his neighbours saying “not yet” until one day the ford n series appears and then aha off to the glue factory no looking back.

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I agree but having a background in industrial controls I am more excited about it. Atleast here on the farm where I am never that far from home.
I keep wondering how to make a multi use system solar home electric with an electric tractor that doubles for extra battery storage come winter. I have an advantage in that I have summer only loads and usage of a tractor. I keep thinking of all the times I fire up my truck or tractor to simply move hay between two barns or some other job that doesn’t let the motor even warm up and think if it was a wood gas system that would be even worse of a hit to do an easy job. But it wood gas powers my genorator in the winter I could do this with an EV and only burn the little fuel it takes to do the job. In the end you have to remember life is all about trade offs. No system is perfect.

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Don’t get me wrong, I’d love an electric for a work commuter and errands. Car would be simple and should be reliable. Easy to own. They’re not there yet, maybe in Florida, but not up here. Even then, you won’t be doing any long hauls, or any work with them either, so you’ll still need a gas burner. The way government has been cranking the costs to own: register, certify, plate, insure, and license drivers and vehicles for the road, the minute I can downsize to just one vehicle, I will. That means an electric will have to be more than a one trick pony before I’ll own one. We are decades away from that event, in fact; for a rural guy like me paying .25/kwhr off the pole, it probably won’t happen in my lifetime.

The way I see it, they’ll need to drop the price to 25K CAD, have a 600km range minimum even through a -25 snowstorm, and carry 4 people plus cargo no problem. Then the government will need to allow charging at .05/kWh. Short of all of the above, it’s not worth it for anyone outside an urban area. My current 18 year old beater I paid $1300.00 for does all this and more, what little savings there are feuling off the grid won’t make up for all the shortfalls.

A 48 volt dc tractor with an electric hydraulic loader would be an awesome mobile battery bank. Your solar array would have tonnes of extra generation in the summer. If I needed it or had any time or resources to devote to it I would look for an electric forklift for parts and controls and merge it with an older tractor with a dead engine. Separate dc hydraulics probably a pump on its own dc motor. Secondary bank for the house.

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That is my thoughts exactly. I have a dead farmall H. I want to try first and then there is a pasquali 988 with a loader and dead motor as well here. But the pasquali has to work I need it in my barn to clean out as the d15 just can’t get into some of the corners and I have to shovel about 200 square feet of the barn by hand right now. So I am hoping as the funds become available to try to convert the old H as a first try. Then the pasquali or one of my case ingersoll 448 only because I might be able to sell the diesel ingersoll I have to fund the electric one I would build. Right now it all comes down to money. I am thinking small tractor as electric atleast to start for tedding and raking hay. I have looked at what it would take for my two bigger jobs and for now it would be more cost effective to find a 100hp gas tractor I could convert to wood. To handle the big jobs of mowing and baling. Maybe as the cost of batteries come down. I see JD is testing a 150 hp electric tractor right now that would be about 300 hp in diesel so big can be done but it takes a lot of batteries which is money.

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I think that’s a perfect fit scenario for a charcoal powered tractor. Lighter unit, easier to build and fire, and could fit hand in hand with a wood heat system. Look up Thierry’s charcoal powered Oliver. Especially for vintage equipment that could bypass a whole bunch of carb issues.

Hmm if only someone had built one…

Honestly look at Waynes tractor it’s more along the lines you were talking about. Not sure where it is maybe someone could post a link.

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I did look at that just debated if I thought making charcoal was all that easy. Mostly because I simply have never seen it done. But I do like how simple the gasificer is and how you can pump exaust back into it.
I sort of wondered if you could just take a bucket of red hot coals out of a wood stove and dump them into a charcoal system as the fuel.

Moved to it’s own thread. Carry on…

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The raw wood gasses are putting on way more “real miles and wood usin” as Steve U would say. It’s hard to argue charcoal superiority, it doesn’t matter anyways. If I had farm woodlot and an outdoor boiler I wold run my whole world on charcoal. The build is supper easy the charcoal is not too much work but it never ends.

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The JD prototype info claimed “around 4 hours” of field time, then 3 hours to recharge. On brand new batteries. I could see using something with those performance figures, but for practical purposes it doesn’t come close, especially now that road time is significant, going from quarter to quarter. The price of such technology also is a question, I suspect it will be prohibitive.

The diesel consumption involved in farming efforts is at a level now to cause seasonal fuel supply issues. To convert that much energy use to electric boggles the mind. I think logistically it’s well beyond our capabilites as a society.

70 years ago when the first gas tractors came across the Midwest I am sure the old timers where saying the same thing about not being able to make enough gas to power all those tractors.

Check out this comparison of electricity vs gas prices for car fuel. It shows that the price per mile is alot less on gas. I saw the same figures when I was part of the ev car club in college back in 95 we calculated that the electronic car we had with lead acid batteries fuel cost was the same as a gas car getting 100 mpg mile per mile traveled.